On February 3, 2012,
the leader of the Caucasus Emirate Doku Umarov announced a moratorium on
attacks on civilians in Russia (see EDM,
February 9, 2012). Since then the moratorium has not been lifted. Umarov’s
reasoning for the halt on attacks against civilians in Russia sounded unusually
realpolitik as he said that Russian citizens were engaging in protest acts
against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government and the Emirate did not
want to stand in their way. He referred to the process of the struggle of Russian
civil society with the Kremlin as a “Chekist regime, of which they are the
hostages.” Doku Umarov’s predecessors, Aslan Maskhadov and Abdul-Khalim
Sadullayev, followed an analogous strategy (http://www.rferl.org/content/will_umarov_ban_on_terrorism_last/24472811.html).
If the moratorium on targeting civilians has not been lifted by the Caucasus
Emirate leadership, then it would be highly implausible that North Caucasian
militants who have avoided attacking Russian civilians would instead choose to
attack civilians in the United States.

The Tsarnaev brothers
spent only a limited time in Chechnya. Apparently, they briefly resided in the
republic just before the start of the second Russian-Chechen war, which began
in September 1999. It is plausible that the brothers may still have been
exposed to some conflict-related trauma resulting from the war, which uprooted
hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war-torn rebel republic. The
most plausible explanation for the April 15 Boston Marathon attack, given the
information publicly available currently, is that some personal events
triggered a violent response from the Tsarnaev brothers. However, many more
Chechen refugees live in European countries, than in the US. Many of them have
also suffered psychological trauma, but there have not been attacks involving
Chechens like this in Europe before.

Russian security
services have ethnic Chechens as well as other ethnic groups at their disposal
to perform “dirty jobs.” In 2009, ethnic Chechens that were in all
likelihood helped by the Russian government carried out a killing of a defector
from Chechnya, Umar Israilov in Austria (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/15/chechen-murder-austria-russia).
On April 16, 2013, Russian president Putin offered assistance with the
investigation in the Boston attack a full three days before word was revealed
to the Western media about the reported involvement of the two Chechen
immigrants (http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-04-16/world/38566064_1_boston-marathon-tom-donilon-obama).
Putin’s proposal may suggest it was a courtesy, but it also might indicate some
prior knowledge about the attack. So potentially one could conspiratorially theorize
that the Russian security services may have planned the attack in Boston in
such a way as to point to “Chechen terrorists”. However, even this elaborate
version has little, if any, supporting evidence, given the fact that the Tsarnaev
brothers moved to the US when they were extremely young and hardly could have been
recruited by the Russian security services.

As
we review what we know of the evidence of the attack and then weigh the
possible ties between the Tsarnaev brothers and Chechen militants in the North
Caucasus, the fact that North Caucasian terrorist number one in the eyes of the
Washington and Moscow—Doku Umarov, the head of the Caucasus Emirate—has
declared a ceasefire on civilian targets inside Russia, diminishes the
possibility that the Tsarnaev brothers could have been part of an elaborate
plan by Chechen terrorists to attack US civilians. Chechens have been fighting
Russians for over 200 hundred years and it makes more sense to limit their
targets to Russia proper than expand their activities to the United States.

In the aftermath of the tragic bombings at the
Boston Marathon on April 15, United States authorities and law enforcement have
been scrambling to identify and capture the perpetrators. On Friday, April 19, media
reports revealed that ethnic Chechen brothers Tamerlan (26) and Jokhar Tsarnaev (19) were
suspected of carrying out the attacks earlier in the week (for a preliminary
biographical sketch of the brothers, see http://jamestownfoundation.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-preliminary-profile-of-boston-bombers.html).
The brothers were apparently caught in a shootout with police in a suburb
outside Boston on Friday morning. Tamerlan died in the armed exchange, while
Jokhar has remained at large as of the publication of this article. As more
information (much of it contradictory or incorrect) is coming to light about
the Tsarnaev brothers and their possible motivation behind the Boston marathon
bombings, some experts have alleged that the two young Chechens were tied to
extremist jihadi groups.

Were Tamerlan and Jokhar Tsarnaev radical adherents of jihadism? Judging by the information gleaned from
open sources, the answer is most probably not. Possibly, the United States security
services and the police have special information that cannot be disclosed yet,
but at this point nothing points to the Tsarnaev brothers’ jihadi background.

First, their photographs, which have been
circulating in the media and on the Internet, point to their integration into
the society where they lived (www.echomsk.spb.ru/blogs/EchoSPB/13507.php). The
brothers’ outward appearance does not provide much grounds for considering them
devotees to any kind of extremist religious movements. Moreover, according to the
testimony of an ethnic Chechen from Boston who knew them, they never appeared
in the mosque (www.golos-ameriki.ru/content/boston-tsarnaev/1644887.html). It
is unlikely that the suspects could hide their political and religious
preferences from everyone, including their family, the Chechen diaspora and all
those who had contacts with them since 2003.

Further, some experts have seized on the
information that the brothers watched Islamist videos on YouTube (http://m.weeklystandard.com/blogs/boston-bomber-posted-video-black-flags-khorasan_718071.html).
But a fuller look at the brothers’ publicly accessible YouTube view history
hardly prejudges their alleged adherence to radical Islam. In fact, it is hard
to find anyone that would not visit an Islamist website at least once in his
life. It is also worth noting that the brothers apparently watched a video like
that two months ago
(www.buzzfeed.com/scott/tamerlan-tsarnaevs-youtube-page-focused-on-islam). It
is unclear what may have sparked their interest in these types of videos. One
of the videos they had watched, “Allah is the One,” is just a two-and-a-half-minute-long
Muslim propagandist video, which recites in English the first sura from the
Quran (www.youtube.com/user/TheMercifulServant). The next video recording is
titled, “Mikail Sokolov: How I Came to Islam.” This video is 18 minutes long
and tells about an ethnic Russian who converted to Islam—to the Shia branch of
Islam to be precise. A Sunni would never watch a video about conversion to
Shiism. So, the brothers were not very selective about which videos they opted
to watch. Two online videos they watched recently depicted musical performance
by a Russian performer Vasya Oblomov, who is considered to be in opposition to
Russian authorities (www.youtube.com/watch?v=p43MJ6NMLZs). Finally, the fifth
video, just dealt with skiing (www.youtube.com/user/MaineSkiFamily).

Moreover, one can
find videos on the Internet that appear to show the eldest brother Tamerlan
Tsarnaev drinking what appears to be alcohol at a bar. So it is still too early
to connect the brothers to jihadist forces until more substantial information
comes to light.

The
Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan, 26 years old, and 19-year-old Jokhar, have been
accused of carrying out the bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15.
Tamerlan has died from injuries sustained from a shootout with police on
Friday, April 19. While, as of the publication of this article, the younger brother,
Jokhar, is still at large.

The
Tsarnaev family used to reside in Kyrgyzstan. They probably ended up in
Kyrgyzstan after mass deportation of Chechens from the North Caucasus in 1944. Today,
there are approximately 20,000 ethnic Chechens still residing in Kyrgyzstan.
Shortly before the onset of the second Russian-Chechen war in September 1999,
the Tsarnaev family moved to their homeland in Chechnya. After the war began in
1999, they moved to Dagestan, having apparently become refugees. The fact that
they resided in Makhachkala and not in Khasavyurt, as most other ethnic Chechens
in the republic, indicates that they had the financial means to live in the
capital of Dagestan, which is quite expensive. They also had relatives in the
city and were able to send their children to one of the best schools in Makhachkala,
School #1. The younger brother, Jokhar
Tsarnaev, went to this school only for one year where he completed the first
grade (http://www.zman.com/news/2013/04/19/149396.html).

Subsequently,
the family was divided as the father, Anzor, stayed in Makhachkala, while the
rest of the family started looking for ways to emigrate from the North
Caucasus. His mother, Zubeidat, had four children: two sons
and two daughters, who managed to emigrate legally to the United States. Once
in the US, she received permanent residence for herself and her children. The
mother’s first name, Zubeidat, suggests she was of Dagestani origin and that is
probably why the family moved to Dagestan in the first place.

Having
settled in the Boston area, the Tsarnaevs tried to adapt to their new home. The
elder brother, Tamerlan, received a degree in engineering and was a boxer, who
reportedly dreamed of competing in sporting events under the US flag. Tamerlan
received US resident status in 2007 (http://lenta.ru/news/2013/04/19/anzor/).

The second
brother, 19-year-old Jokhar, had only just begun to attend college. On his
Internet page of the online social network VK.com, he described his views and also
listed several groups of which he was a member. Jokhar was a member of three
Muslim groups, but none of the groups could be described as terrorist or
jihadist; they rather provided information about Islam. One of the groups, for
instance, Salamword collected funds for people suffering with cancer. The
second group, Islam.Muslims.Islam, simply spread photographs of mosques from
around the world. The third group, called Lya ‘iLyaha’iLla-Pust Zvuchit V
Nashikh Serdtsakh, does nothing besides quoting Muslim hadiths.

In light
of preliminary information about the Tsarnaevs, there does not appear to be much, if any,
indication that Jokhar had any connection to jihadist groups or sympathized
with the most well-known terrorist organization in the North Caucasus called
the Caucasus Emirate, or any other similar groups. On the contrary, in one of
his blog entries, he laments having no American friends, having lived in the
country for so long. All of his friends were from the former Soviet Union.

Another
surprising piece of evidence suggests that Jokhar had accessed his webpage at 3
o’clock Boston time, but did not leave any comments. It was unclear whether it
was AM or PM time (http://vk.com/id160300242?z=tag160300242).
The bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line were detonated at approximately
2:50 PM, local time.

The father
of the two brothers from Makhachkala reckons that his children were framed and
that his son Jokhar was like an angel (http://lenta.ru/news/2013/04/19/anzor/).
Friends of the brothers describe them as ordinary American guys.

In any case, the Boston
police already have made a mistake in their preliminary analysis of the brothers,
stating that the suspects may have received martial skills, including the
ability to make Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Chechnya. They were not
present in Chechnya, either during the first war (1994-1995) or during the
second war in Chechnya that started in September 1999. The brothers would not
have been able to receive any type of fighting or military experience because
of their age. Their family emigrated to the US when the eldest brother was only
16. Taking into account that before their move to the US they had lived in
Russia for two years and prior to that they had resided for one year in
Dagestan, it is hard to see their connection to militants operating in Chechnya
or elsewhere in the North Caucasus.

About The Jamestown Foundation

The Jamestown Foundation’s mission is to inform and educate policy makers and the broader community about events and trends in those societies which are strategically or tactically important to the United States and which frequently restrict access to such information. Utilizing indigenous and primary sources, Jamestown’s material is delivered without political bias, filter or agenda. It is often the only source of information which should be, but is not always, available through official or intelligence channels, especially in regard to Eurasia and terrorism.